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How many times have you heard a friend say, “It seems that I am always picking the wrong kind of person to date?” Maybe you’ve even said this yourself, after coming out of a true nightmarish relationship. But what if you never allowed that first or second date to go any further?

No discussion of ADR is complete without reference to the works of Bill Eddy. This is an essential book for divorce professionals, both as interesting and informative reading and as a book to keep on one’s desk “just in case.

Is someone verbally attacking you at work, at home or in your community? Telling you that you’re a loser, saying "It's all your fault," publicly humiliating you, spreading false rumors about you or claiming credit for your hard work? Such people are often narcissists who are also high-conflict people (HCPs).

There is a video that went viral on Facebook titled The Dangers Of Social Media (Child Predator Social Experiment). Watching it hits you right in the feels, especially if you’re a parent. The video shows a guy pretending to be a 15-year-old boy on social media who lures three girls from different families to meet with him. It turns out he is not a 15-year-old boy and he gets the surprise of his life to find the parents waiting for him along with their daughters.

I love dialectical behavior therapy. As a highly sensitive person who experiences their emotions intensely, learning dialectical behavior therapy (or DBT) has made a profound and lasting difference in my own life. Now that I’m a social worker, I continue to use the skills I learned in DBT every single day but I’m also in the position of sharing my joyful enthusiasm for this compassionate and highly-effective treatment with others.

As a longtime judicial officer, I was excited to be summoned for jury duty in January 2017. When I arrived at the jury assembly room, I wondered why there were so few potential jurors. The jury commissioner explained: There was only one trial set that day, a criminal case.

It's natural to feel monstrously pissed off right now. What you do with that feeling makes all the difference. There's a great line in The Outlaw Josey Wales when Clint Eastwood tells his about-to-be-besieged friends that the only way to save themselves is to get "plumb mad-dog mean."

In a previous article in which I crowned EMPATHY as king when dealing with high-conflict personalities—those folks who are the most toxic, the most difficult of difficult people—I asked for feedback from readers. You were kind with your comments and thoughtful with your suggestions. The comment that resonated the most was this: